why we do this

Three Advertising students from the Willem de Kooning Academy started this project after encountering a remarkable insight when researching the refugee crisis. During several conversations with refugees in the Netherlands we noticed that most of them suprisingly felt a sense of guilt about the current situation. If you take a closer look at the Dutch laws it’s not hard to understand why.

Refugees in the Netherlands are getting a subsidy to live from. They are fully aware about the fact that this money comes from taxes. Most of the refugees that we spoke to, would have rather worked for their income. In the current situation refugees aren’t allowed to work for the first 6 months of their stay. After this period of time, it is still very unclear when they will get their Dutch working permit. With this project we want to help the refugees without forgetting the interests of the Dutch society.

Illustrations by: Joëlle Strijk

We try to help people like

Belal

Before Belal came to The Netherlands he used to work as an IT engineer for several companies in Syria and Tunesia. In his business it’s very important to keep up to date with the current techniques. It took the Dutch government over a year to arrange a working permit for Belal. In the meantime it was hard for Belal to keep track with the daily changing IT software. Examples like these give us extra motivation to succeed our project.